1ironjaw
Hi all,
So I posted the same post in Fine Press forum but wanted to post here as there is a lot of engagement and as a non-American, I am interested in hearing your views outside the fine press world.
So this 4 July, the USA celebrates the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and I wanted to know what fine books, general publications, ephemera, etc you've come across that you are eyeing to purchase.
First, what comes to mind is the Thornwillow Dispatch's Picture Democracy by Wolf Burchard. I'm still thinking on whether to get this or not, but if so it will be the Classic Edition, as the Patrons' Edition including shipping to the UK is over my budget.
America 250
- Picture Democracy by Wolf Burchard - Thornwillow Dispatch - $45 - link
- Bill of Rights
- The Declaration of Independence
- The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton - I recently purchased the LEC 2 vol set.
- Declare: A Civic Gospel (Fine Press Edition) - Arion Press - US$3,000.00 - link
- Alastair Cooke’s America - £500 - link - I have this in FS edition.
- You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times by Howard Zinn
- Artists in Times of War and Other Essays by Howard Zinn
- Poetry as Insurgent Art by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
- Thomas Paine in his own words - Foolscap Press - link - I have this in FS edition.
So I posted the same post in Fine Press forum but wanted to post here as there is a lot of engagement and as a non-American, I am interested in hearing your views outside the fine press world.
So this 4 July, the USA celebrates the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and I wanted to know what fine books, general publications, ephemera, etc you've come across that you are eyeing to purchase.
First, what comes to mind is the Thornwillow Dispatch's Picture Democracy by Wolf Burchard. I'm still thinking on whether to get this or not, but if so it will be the Classic Edition, as the Patrons' Edition including shipping to the UK is over my budget.
America 250
- Picture Democracy by Wolf Burchard - Thornwillow Dispatch - $45 - link
- Bill of Rights
- The Declaration of Independence
- The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton - I recently purchased the LEC 2 vol set.
- Declare: A Civic Gospel (Fine Press Edition) - Arion Press - US$3,000.00 - link
- Alastair Cooke’s America - £500 - link - I have this in FS edition.
- You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times by Howard Zinn
- Artists in Times of War and Other Essays by Howard Zinn
- Poetry as Insurgent Art by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
- Thomas Paine in his own words - Foolscap Press - link - I have this in FS edition.
3ironjaw
>2 HonorWulf: Oh that's interesting. I have the Folio LE which I bought in 2009 as one of my first LE with Rockwell Kent's illustrations for £175
4mr.philistine
The thread discussing FS options for the 2026 US Semiquincentennial... https://www.librarything.com/topic/362821
5HonorWulf
>3 ironjaw: That's a great book!
7EasternWapiti
>1 ironjaw: The Folio Society publishing the "great American novel" to observe the US American Revolution sestercentennial is a case of the current FS management saying, "If we actually published a book about the American Revolution, we don't think it would sell." Maybe they are right.
To get back to your original question, if I were looking for a nice edition of the most classic novel about the American Revolution, I would pick James Fenimore Cooper's The Spy: A Tale of the Neutral Ground in the 1963 Heritage Press edition with illustrations by Henry C. Pitz.
The Limited Editions Club version came out the same year, and if anyone prefers to buy a different and brand new edition, the Library of America's James Fenimore Cooper: Two Novels of the American Revolution (2019) is still in stock.
Nearly ten years ago, I was lucky enough to find the HP edition in pristine condition with Sandglass intact, and I read it within the last few years. In its day the original edition of the novel was a runaway best seller, and it was Cooper's breakthrough novel, the one that made his reputation.
There is no better fictional reimagining to feel what it was really like to live through the Revolutionary War. Cooper's Westchester County, New York, could just as easily have been New Jersey or Ninety Six District, South Carolina.
Cooper actually bought a residence in Westchester County after his marriage. Apparently, one of his neighbors was John Jay, the source for the story and during the Revolution the actual spymaster who controlled the missions of the novel's title character.
Cooper's wife was Susan De Lancey, which leads me to suspect he had a number of Loyalist in-laws.
If the Folio Society were thinking of reprinting a title from its own bibliography to commemorate US 250, I think An Expression of the American Mind: Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson (2013) is their most beautiful production that would be appropriate.
However, I should warn that this FS selection omits Jefferson's famous "firebell in the night" letter. As usual, it is the LOA Jefferson volume that packs as much between the covers as the home library can accommodate.
If someone really wanted to acquire a jewel for the US 250th, they might search for the 1964 LEC edition of Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanacks, illustrated by Norman Rockwell. Personally, I will pass on it, because I own the 1976 Paddington Press trade reprint done fifty years ago to celebrate the Revolution bicentennial.
Earlier today I ordered the recent new LOA edition of John Quincy Adams: Speeches and Writings. It is appropriate to mention it here, because among John Quincy Adams's claims to fame were his Fourth of July orations, and of the 21 documents collected in this book, at least four or five of them fall into this category.
To get back to your original question, if I were looking for a nice edition of the most classic novel about the American Revolution, I would pick James Fenimore Cooper's The Spy: A Tale of the Neutral Ground in the 1963 Heritage Press edition with illustrations by Henry C. Pitz.
The Limited Editions Club version came out the same year, and if anyone prefers to buy a different and brand new edition, the Library of America's James Fenimore Cooper: Two Novels of the American Revolution (2019) is still in stock.
Nearly ten years ago, I was lucky enough to find the HP edition in pristine condition with Sandglass intact, and I read it within the last few years. In its day the original edition of the novel was a runaway best seller, and it was Cooper's breakthrough novel, the one that made his reputation.
There is no better fictional reimagining to feel what it was really like to live through the Revolutionary War. Cooper's Westchester County, New York, could just as easily have been New Jersey or Ninety Six District, South Carolina.
Cooper actually bought a residence in Westchester County after his marriage. Apparently, one of his neighbors was John Jay, the source for the story and during the Revolution the actual spymaster who controlled the missions of the novel's title character.
Cooper's wife was Susan De Lancey, which leads me to suspect he had a number of Loyalist in-laws.
If the Folio Society were thinking of reprinting a title from its own bibliography to commemorate US 250, I think An Expression of the American Mind: Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson (2013) is their most beautiful production that would be appropriate.
However, I should warn that this FS selection omits Jefferson's famous "firebell in the night" letter. As usual, it is the LOA Jefferson volume that packs as much between the covers as the home library can accommodate.
If someone really wanted to acquire a jewel for the US 250th, they might search for the 1964 LEC edition of Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanacks, illustrated by Norman Rockwell. Personally, I will pass on it, because I own the 1976 Paddington Press trade reprint done fifty years ago to celebrate the Revolution bicentennial.
Earlier today I ordered the recent new LOA edition of John Quincy Adams: Speeches and Writings. It is appropriate to mention it here, because among John Quincy Adams's claims to fame were his Fourth of July orations, and of the 21 documents collected in this book, at least four or five of them fall into this category.
10ironjaw
>7 EasternWapiti: Wow, I just have to say wow. What a great list. Thank you very much for sharing this. I need to hunt these down.
11drasvola
>1 ironjaw:
Great to hear from you, Faisel!
To mark the 250th, I would choose USA, A Trilogy by John Dos Passos.
Great to hear from you, Faisel!
To mark the 250th, I would choose USA, A Trilogy by John Dos Passos.
12The_JPS
>11 drasvola: Such an amazing trilogy. This is what I voted for in the USA 250 Folio survey.
13ironjaw
>11 drasvola: My dear friend Antonio. I've missed you and your suggestions. I think about you whenever I think about Spain
15TheEconomist
One all-American book that the FS has yet to publish is "Uncle Tom's Cabin". Not without its controversies, of course, but there can't be many books that had as much of an impact as this one did that have not yet been done by FS.
17coynedj
>15 TheEconomist: I read it a few years back. When I finished it, I thought "it's propaganda, but it's incredibly effective propaganda". Of course, it was propaganda in favor of the at-the-time controversial thought that black slaves were human beings who deserved every human right that others enjoyed. It deserves an FS edition indeed.
18CJDelDotto
Along the same lines, FS has never published Ralph Waldo Emerson's Essays, not even a selection of these works. This feels like a major gap to me.
19podaniel
>16 folio_books:
No it's not--I had to read the book for college and it is one of the worst-written novels I have come across (the great critic Edmund Wilson described her prose as "inept"). She published 30 books and this is the only one anyone remembers. The book, however, is of the utmost historical importance (and the characters and plot are quite good). The bad prose, though, is a non-starter for me.
>18 CJDelDotto:
Agreed--I would buy that in a heartbeat.
No it's not--I had to read the book for college and it is one of the worst-written novels I have come across (the great critic Edmund Wilson described her prose as "inept"). She published 30 books and this is the only one anyone remembers. The book, however, is of the utmost historical importance (and the characters and plot are quite good). The bad prose, though, is a non-starter for me.
>18 CJDelDotto:
Agreed--I would buy that in a heartbeat.
20EasternWapiti
>15 TheEconomist: >16 folio_books: If Folio published an SE of Uncle Tom's Cabin, I would probably buy it, but I already own three editions of it.
The Library of America omnibus edition of Stowe (1982). This is the venerable LOA #4, bound in real Scholco Brillianta cloth.
The 1962 Heritage Press edition illustrated by Miguel Covarrubias and based on the 1938 Limited Editions Club original.
The 1882 Houghton Mifflin edition that I bought cheap because of its used condition. My description of this one says "contains a frontispiece and 105 black-and white drawings, with a new thirty-one-page introduction incorporating correspondence from famous writers and contemporary public figures commenting on the book, features a twenty-page bibliographical essay by George Bullen of the British Museum that includes a list of editions of the book."
One of the editorial comments was by Charles Dickens. Mrs Stowe sent him a copy hoping for an endorsement, but got a condescending "thumbs down" for her trouble.
I read the HP edition thirty years ago and found it entertaining and surprising but weird. It features shameless use of coincidence and a very strange ending, and is sometimes entertaining for the wrong reasons. Mrs Stowe could have written script for the 1930s Amos 'n Andy radio program.
But I am a history student, not a literary critic, and I am hoping to read it again because of two books that I have very recently added to my library and want to read in conjunction with the novel.
A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin: Presenting the Original Facts and Documents upon Which the Story is Founded by Harriett Beecher Stowe (Dover Publications 2015). Mrs Stowe's Southern critics demanded to know her evidence for the allegations in her book, and to their embarrassment, she obliged them.
A Plausible Man: The True Story of the Escaped Slave Who Inspired Uncle Tom's Cabin by Susanna Ashton (The New Press, 2024). The fugitive slave who knocked on Mrs Stowe's door in the middle of the night and started the whole thing originally ran away from an owner who lived within forty miles of where I am now sitting. The story had fallen through the cracks of history until Professor Ashton started researching it.
The Library of America omnibus edition of Stowe (1982). This is the venerable LOA #4, bound in real Scholco Brillianta cloth.
The 1962 Heritage Press edition illustrated by Miguel Covarrubias and based on the 1938 Limited Editions Club original.
The 1882 Houghton Mifflin edition that I bought cheap because of its used condition. My description of this one says "contains a frontispiece and 105 black-and white drawings, with a new thirty-one-page introduction incorporating correspondence from famous writers and contemporary public figures commenting on the book, features a twenty-page bibliographical essay by George Bullen of the British Museum that includes a list of editions of the book."
One of the editorial comments was by Charles Dickens. Mrs Stowe sent him a copy hoping for an endorsement, but got a condescending "thumbs down" for her trouble.
I read the HP edition thirty years ago and found it entertaining and surprising but weird. It features shameless use of coincidence and a very strange ending, and is sometimes entertaining for the wrong reasons. Mrs Stowe could have written script for the 1930s Amos 'n Andy radio program.
But I am a history student, not a literary critic, and I am hoping to read it again because of two books that I have very recently added to my library and want to read in conjunction with the novel.
A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin: Presenting the Original Facts and Documents upon Which the Story is Founded by Harriett Beecher Stowe (Dover Publications 2015). Mrs Stowe's Southern critics demanded to know her evidence for the allegations in her book, and to their embarrassment, she obliged them.
A Plausible Man: The True Story of the Escaped Slave Who Inspired Uncle Tom's Cabin by Susanna Ashton (The New Press, 2024). The fugitive slave who knocked on Mrs Stowe's door in the middle of the night and started the whole thing originally ran away from an owner who lived within forty miles of where I am now sitting. The story had fallen through the cracks of history until Professor Ashton started researching it.
21TheEconomist
>20 EasternWapiti: "I already own three editions of it." I think therein lies the rub - it is going to be hard for FS to identify an important work of Americana that has not already been published multiple times by American publishers.
As to the literary reputation of the book - it is notable that the critics who dismiss the book completely tend to be male - in the 19th century it was repeatedly referred to as a "sentimental" book. ISTR a similar thing happening with "Wuthering Heights". Whether the quality of the prose is enough to render the book unsuitable for FS is, I would suggest, open for debate - we are talking about the publisher that chose to publish "Earl Chesterfield's Letters to his Son" and "Poetic Gems selected from the Works of William McGonagall", after all.
As to the literary reputation of the book - it is notable that the critics who dismiss the book completely tend to be male - in the 19th century it was repeatedly referred to as a "sentimental" book. ISTR a similar thing happening with "Wuthering Heights". Whether the quality of the prose is enough to render the book unsuitable for FS is, I would suggest, open for debate - we are talking about the publisher that chose to publish "Earl Chesterfield's Letters to his Son" and "Poetic Gems selected from the Works of William McGonagall", after all.
22EasternWapiti
>21 TheEconomist: A fair assessment would be that Uncle Tom's Cabin is an eccentric novel and a historical blockbuster. My reaction is that there is nothing wrong with an eccentric book. After all, the Folio Society has published both Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy and Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land.
There is a peculiar aspect to UCT's publication history. During the 19th century, it sold massively and was avidly read. Hence by 1882 a publisher thought it necessary to include an essay listing the editions it had already run through since 1852. Then, sometime in the early 20th century, it suddenly and totally went out of print and nobody reprinted it. By 1938, George Macy was performing a public service by bringing out even a limited edition.
At one point in the 20th century, the three best selling novels in the history of the United States were Uncle Tom's Cabin (number one), Charles Sheldon's In His Steps (number two), and Lew Wallace's Ben-Hur (number three). My probable source for that claim is Irving McKee's biography "Ben-Hur" Wallace (1947).
The sales record of these titles was owing to their reaching Calvinist households where reading novels was usually thought to be a temptation practiced by hell-bound persons (along with dancing and attending Barnum's circus).
So if the Folio Society were to publish UCT as one of its regular titles, I would purchase it and add it to my UCT pile because of its historical significance. Maybe Harriett Beecher Stowe was indeed the little woman who started the big war.
There is a peculiar aspect to UCT's publication history. During the 19th century, it sold massively and was avidly read. Hence by 1882 a publisher thought it necessary to include an essay listing the editions it had already run through since 1852. Then, sometime in the early 20th century, it suddenly and totally went out of print and nobody reprinted it. By 1938, George Macy was performing a public service by bringing out even a limited edition.
At one point in the 20th century, the three best selling novels in the history of the United States were Uncle Tom's Cabin (number one), Charles Sheldon's In His Steps (number two), and Lew Wallace's Ben-Hur (number three). My probable source for that claim is Irving McKee's biography "Ben-Hur" Wallace (1947).
The sales record of these titles was owing to their reaching Calvinist households where reading novels was usually thought to be a temptation practiced by hell-bound persons (along with dancing and attending Barnum's circus).
So if the Folio Society were to publish UCT as one of its regular titles, I would purchase it and add it to my UCT pile because of its historical significance. Maybe Harriett Beecher Stowe was indeed the little woman who started the big war.
23HonorWulf
>22 EasternWapiti: Yes, it's widely considered to be the best-selling novel of the 19th century in America, outsold only by The Bible.
24Jason461
I think John Lewis's memoir, "Walking with the Wind" would be an excellent choice. I don't think it will happen, but I'd buy it immediately.
25RickartAllen
In 2009 Folio published a very nice edition of Thoreau's Walden--large format, quarter leather, large full-page black and white photos of the pond and environs. For us boomers at least Walden was a book that practically everyone read (or at least started) in college, embodying what for most of us was an admirable and characteristically American attitude of cantankerous individualism combined with an thorough-going commitment to simplicity in all things. We could never live up to it; neither could Thoreau, for that matter. But I think it's still a quintessential American book, and it would be nice if Folio brought it back for our uneasy observation of this coming anniversary.
26LesMiserables
>25 RickartAllen: I have it. A splendid volume, well made, and affordable. I bought mine back in June 2010 from FS for £50.
